Your turn: Newtown shootings, Dec. 17

Step one: Stop making killers famous

One motivation for mass murder is to become notorious, and the media need to stop reporting the names and photos of criminal reprobates. Their identities should become forgotten, like the nameless scum that lines our sewers.

We need a system that assigns a substitute name to suspects, similar to how we name hurricanes, such as Killer2012C-Newtown or Bomber1996A-Atlanta, by which they will lose their personal identity instead of becoming famous. Their facial features should be blurred in published photos. This practice would also protect the identities of those who are wrongly accused, such as Richard Jewell in the Atlanta Olympics bombing.

Let's stop immortalizing criminals.

Jerry Hirschinger

West Lafayette

An answer and an expectation of more

This newspaper asks: 1. "Who would murder 20 kids?" And 2. writes: "Not again ... where do you start?"

The answers:

1. One of the many deranged or mentally ill persons evidently present in this country who has access to one or more of the 300 million or so guns in homes or legally concealed, which has been purchased from one of the 58,000 gun suppliers in the United States.

2. The suggestion by the editorial board to start "by hugging your kids" does not start to solve the problem. Perhaps the newspaper has other suggestions?

Note: The writer of this letter does not receive any remuneration from gun sales, the National Rifle Association or related activities of this organization.